Exhibition on troubled past has a message for present

The Last Broadcast, a show that’s currently running at Galway Arts Centre, explores nationalism, disinformation and the role of technology in the run-up to and during World War II. It sounds like an exhibition that was designed to reflect current events in Europe but it’s actually a coincidence that artist Declan Clarke just finished working on it on February 24, the day Russia invaded Ukraine.

The Last Broadcast was commissioned by a gallery in Berlin, where Dublin-born Declan is partly based and, as he was creating it, he was beginning to have doubts about its relevance.

“When I was making the film [the cornerstone of The Last Broadcast] I said to myself, ‘what am I doing?’,” he recalls with a wry laugh. But his exploration of the role played by technology and propaganda in Nazi Germany, seems remarkably relevant now.

The Last Broadcast puts a spotlight on three Irishmen whose names are forever linked with Nazi Germany: Francis Stuart, Frank Ryan and, of course, William Joyce. Better known as Lord Haw Haw, Galwayman Joyce was hanged in England in 1946 and buried in an unmarked grave. Three decades after his execution for treason, he was re-interred in the New Cemetery, Bohermore, fulfilling his desire to be buried in Galway.

For more, read this week’s Connacht Tribune.

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